22.12.14

“In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side By Side I” is the first in series of videos exploring the complex adoption and accessibility of the internet in a Developing country. Rather than thinking about technology from a position of privilege, it focuses on the gap, failure, limitation, and the frustration of access to technology.

The videos are primarily inspired by my saved Yahoo chat histories from a 4 year long online relationship when I lived in Iran… but rather than delving into the relationship itself, it creates an imagined space between physical and virtual to connect the failure of the relationship to the failure of technology and communication.

25.10.14

19.9.14

Really happy to announce the release of a new video series, Sightings, on the video label Undervolt &Co.A new video will be released for streaming every week, and some posters and DVDs are for sale as well!Here is Littoral Zones, the first video of the series.

17.4.14

A while back I found this particular video on Youtube and I was thrilled; I didn't have much information about the artist, but this work alone was enough to be a great inspiration to me. A few months later, I realized that the video got removed and I was quite disappointed, but only until Mr. Chamberlain himself noticed the post on this blog and kindly wrote me an email about it. He gave me a little bit more insights about his work and very generously, he sent me a DVD copy including some of his video work from the same era.

He says that this video was produced at one of many residencies at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY. The center started up in late 70's as a grant funded research and production center for experimental video. The mandate of the center was to design and build equipment to be housed in a lab that was cheaply accessible to artists. They had very competitive prices and a lot of artists applied for this residency. David Jones designed and built most of the equipment which was during the hybrid analog/digital transition days. The totally synthetic imagery (no camera) of Chamberlain's work was produced by a system David Jones built for the center that basically converted analog waveforms from modified audio synth processors (8 analog inputs) into digital control signals (8 digital outputs). Apparently, he is still building as David Jones Design...video switching matrixes, etc.

Mr Chamberlain has been a musician for years, and he composed the music for all of his videos. He's also been teaching video art for the last 40 years and he even developed an electronic arts program at the university of Hawaii in 1991 where he is still today.

Mr. Chamberlain is quite aware of the VHS quality of the transfer for this work and to quote him: "The occasional Glitches resulting from old age actually match up with contemporary glitch aesthetics...sort of curious."

12.3.14

“My work concerns the paradoxes of visual perception, the enigmas and quirks, and how it all forms the basis for our realities. The impact, excitement, and energies created by incongruity, juxtaposition and opposites all interest me.

The images are couched in paradoxical terms and must challenge the mind’s eye, must invoke opposites and hold them in tension. The work at times seems to refer to something in reality, but then the reference is denied. Identity; the fusion of so many experiences, so many inquiries, so many intuitions is also a primary issue.” -Deborah Remington

25.2.14

New video made for Computers Club, Visites Possibles embeds different electronic landscapes into the walls of an architectural space. "Entities" arise and disappear regularly throughout the visit, as if haunting this virtual environment.

Special thanks to Roger Tellier-Craig for this stunning electronic score.

10.12.13

I am happy to announce the result of a year long collaboration with the amazing Brenna Murphy,Birch Cooper and Roger Tellier-Craig. I've been an admirer of Brenna and Birch's work for a while and this was a truly amazing experience for Roger end I to collaborate with them. Along the way, Yoshi Sodeoka started to work on a video label project, UNDERVOLT&CO., and we thought this was a great context for Spectral Net to present the result of our first collaborative video series. I will also release some solo work on the label eventually.

About Spectral Net:

Spectral Net is a collaboration between Brenna
Murphy, Birch Cooper (Portland), Roger Tellier-Craig and me (Montreal). We have been working on parallel roads for a few years now,
mutually aware and admiring each other’s works during all this time. Our common
interest for digital and analog technologies, electronic sonorities and
visuals as well as experimental approaches have set grounds for this
collaborative project, which started in early 2013 and has since evolved to become
Spectral Net. Although our interests are very similar, our aesthetic and
the tools we use differ on many levels, which makes this collaboration an unexpected
and unique meeting between our two (or four) distinctive artistic approaches.

For our first series,we focused on experimenting and
developing a language by generating and exchanging original work
to be used as source material by the collaborators. The analog and digital sounds were provided
by Roger and Birch who created a bank from which Brenna and I
could choose and add to our videos. The series of four videos, is the result
of the dialogue between these different approches to video and sound.

26.11.13

Here is the result of the work in progress I talked about here. It's a 1 minute video I made for the 50 years of video art, commissioned by CQAM. I used the LZX modular video synthesizer to interact with the movements of the dancer. The context of this commission seemed like the perfect opportunity to pay an homage to many of my favorite video artists who worked with dancers and videos. Ed Tannenbaum, Erkki Kuriennemi, Woody Vasulka,Jean Piché for example.

Roger Rellier-Craig did a fantastic job for the music, and Claudine Hébert was the wonderful dancer.

7.11.13

"Film is capable of presenting unrealistic world as a vivid reality and creating a strange space peculiar to the media. My major intention is to change the ordinary every day life scenes and draw the audience (myself) into a vortex of supernatural illusion by exercising the magic of films." (Takashi Ito, in Image Forum, Oct.1984)

1.10.13

Phillips has partnered with Tumblr and curator Lindsay Howard to present Paddles ON!, a groundbreaking auction and exhibition that brings together artists who are using digital technologies to establish the next generation of contemporary art.